The universal popularity and use of electrical and electronic devices in homes and offices today create a proliferation and tangle of wires needed to operate these devices. In many homes and offices, wires are strewn along floors, behind furniture and under rugs.
These wires are especially unsightly, tangled and dangerous when longer than needed to reach from a wall outlet to the device or appliance they energize. Also, it is hard to associate an individual wire with its appliance when the wires are tangled. Housecleaning becomes harder and the danger of tripping or stumbling over a wire is greater.
Outdoor wires cause many of the same problems. Also, TV and radio reception can be improved if wires are arranged in an orderly manner so that power cables are separated from signal and antenna wires. Inevitable kinks and knots add to the entanglement of these wires. If the wires are connected to cooking equipment, tripping over one of them may cause a dangerous spill.
Many solutions and devices have been developed for "taking up" excess lengths of wires, but none combine practicality, effectiveness and aesthetics. Most of these devices accommodate only one wire, so that numerous devices are needed for taking up or reeling in a plurality of wires. U.S. Pat. No. 4,083,621 shows such a single wire take-up device. Other devices, such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,290,453, rely on spring loaded take-up mechanisms, but these lose their effectiveness as the spring loses its resiliency.